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Looking For God

looking for god

Had a great conversation Sunday in a class looking at the Bible readings for next Sunday. John 6:35, 41-51 is part of a long conversation on crazy talk by Jesus. I say that because that is how it sounds to someone who is not a Christian and how it sounded to the first audience. Jesus goes on about eating his body, that he is the true bread from heaven, that he is God, and most everyone listening thinks he has lost his mind.

For me, its that reminder that we still don’t understand God or what God has done in Jesus. The crazy talk bothers us because it isn’t rational but yet we want a connection to something spiritual, something beyond this reality. Too many congregations fall into marketing a “jesus program” rather than a relationship with a God beyond your understanding. Give some cash, show up to take a seat, engage in the selective battles of the true faithful: condemn homosexual behavior or welcome homosexuals fully into the community; preserve traditional worship (keep out the drums) to keep the faithful or go all alternative with band and media to reach the young; keep the church small so we know everyone or grow the church to megasize.

And somehow we convince ourselves that we are right in staking out these polar positions because we know what God wants, we know who God is. My own journey that has led to wired jesus is that the net has become one of those few places where we are wiling to get honest with ourselves. What we choose to hide in public we willingly blog, post, or tweet like a note in a bottle on a digital sea, hoping that someone will find it and give us an answer that is real about a God that is beyond us. In the end we want to know a greater God we can’t understand but know is concerned about a relationship with us over a well crafted definition of doctrine or box of right belief.

Perhaps thats why I like this quote I read this morning from my morning meditation book For All the Saints. In the end, whether in meat world or the digital world, the journey of faith is an adventure, not an answer.

“These exclamatory statements were all Paul found left to say about the ways of God after he had struggled with the whys and wherefores of God’s wisdom. Judgement and love. Because for all of our knowledge and experience of God as they are expressed in creeds and dogma, he is always beyond us, beyond our understanding and reason, beyond our neat little blueprints and formulas.

Which brings me to this: Never be misled into supposing that we Christians
think we have God all neatly packaged and labeled for our easy distribution
and consumption like a package of frozen peas. Our creeds and dogmas only
serve to lead us into the “depth of the riches” of God’s being. There is a mystery
about the nature and ways of God that you and I can never expect to fathom
entirely- otherwise God would not be God. We do but touch the fringe of his
garment. But we do believe that the fringe which we touch is real!

Harry Emerson Fosdick once described it as being like a man standing on
The beach at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. This little portion of the coast
line and the ocean which touches it, I know this is real. But beyond it are
incalculable miles of shore line and ocean which I can never know
intimately and about which I can only surmise. These two things I know
about the ocean and God: this portion which touches me is real; beyond it
Is far , far more than I can ever know.

The creeds and dogmas of the church then are no pat formulas which provide all
the neat answers man can ever find as to the nature of God. Nor are they
barriers bearing the legend, ‘ Thus far and no farther.’ Rather are they invitations
to adventure, a kind of spiritual road map offering you the experience of
others who have found a rich and exciting experience of God.”

Edward A. Steimle (1907-1988), from his book, Are You Looking for God?

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